Polish Workers Filling Gaps in Irish Economy

Sunday Business Post - July 2006

While there are significant numbers of Polish nationals now working in the Irish economy, these are filling vacancies in sectors where demand is strong, rather than displacing Irish workers.

EU10 nationals have accounted for approximately half of all jobs created in Ireland since May 1st 2004. Over 50% of these work in manufacturing and construction, with catering, retail/wholesale and financial sectors coming next. The majority of the EU10 migrants who came to Ireland in 2005 were Polish.

Heidi Lougheed, Social Policy Executive with IBEC, says that Polish people are working in these sectors of the economy as that is where people are required.

“It’s not that Polish candidates are useful for particular sectors, it is that certain sectors have job vacancies in large numbers which have been filled by people who have presented themselves,” she said.

Most companies haven’t needed to change their traditional recruitment practices.

“Companies have gone about trying to recruit people in the same way that they normally have, using recruitment companies, websites, advertisements in newspapers, recommendations from colleagues and walk-ins,” said Lougheed. “People aren’t deliberately looking for Polish nationals; the Polish nationals are coming forward to them.

Other companies have been more pro-active. A number of Irish recruitment companies have built up links with the Polish market. There are also a large number of Polish based recruiters who send staff to Ireland – the website of the Polish embassy in Ireland lists twenty seven such companies. Finally Eures offers a free recruitment service to Irish companies (see panels).

The two main issues which employers encounter when taking on Polish staff are language and qualifications. English is taught as a second language in Polish schools and many people arrive here with a good knowledge of the language, but not everyone is fluent.

“The language issue continues to be a problem. While many people are highly educated with degrees and masters, quite often when they come and work here they are working at lesser skills levels than they are capable of, purely because of the language issue,” said Patricia Callan, Director of the Small Firms Association (SFA).

Even for jobs where staff are not customer facing, English language skills are vital – for example in ensuring that staff understand contracts and health and safety requirements.

There have also been difficulties around the issue of qualifications, when employers need to be sure that candidates can do the job required. Degree certificates in Polish, for example, can present a problem to employers.

“The problem is often not so much problems with the actual qualifications, but working out what the qualification actually means,” says Lougheed.

The National Qualifications Authority of Ireland (NQAI) offer a translation and equivalence service which employers can use to determine how a Polish qualification compares with Irish standards.

There can also be some extra training costs involved with hiring Polish workers, although this are not seen as a significant factor.

“Individuals coming forward can be very skilled and they are very good at what they do, but the way of doing whatever the process happens to be is slightly different in Poland than here. Someone needs to show them how it is done in Ireland, or in that company. However that could just easily happen between two Irish nationals who have worked for two different companies who had different ways of doing the same thing,” said Lougheed.

There has been a perception that Irish companies were using Polish and other EU 10 workers to keep salaries down within certain sectors. However EU and Irish government equality legislation is very strict.

“If someone is doing the same job, for the same amount of time, and someone is paying them less money, then that is discriminatory and that is illegal,” says Callan.

Factors such as experience and qualifications also impact on salary levels, but that occurs in the case of all candidates, regardless of nationality. Evidence suggests that employers who did attempt to pay lower salaries have suffered.

“In the past employers generally speaking were not paying the going rate for the job, perhaps just paying above the minimum wage,” said Tony Watson, Eures Co-ordinator with FAS. “This was a rather short sighted policy because once they came here they could see that they could get better money with another employer and they left. I think the challenge to employers is induction, integration and retention in the sense of training.”

The significant numbers of Polish people within the Irish labour market suggest that a permanent link between the two countries is forming. Given the projected continuing excess demand within the Irish labour market this connection looks likely to strengthen going forward, with recruitment more focused within particular areas of the economy.

“Considering how stretched our labour market is at the moment, if the economy continues to remain on its current path it is very likely that we will continue to need strong numbers of non-Irish nationals coming in,” said Lougheed. “What we may see is that some sectors need more people than others. That is already the case but I think it will become slightly more obvious.”

EURES Insert

Employers in Ireland can recruit from Poland, and all other European Economic Area member states (EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), by using the European Commission’s Eures network. Eures links the Public Employment Services (PES) of the EEA countries. In Ireland Eures is based in FÁS.

Eures offers two distinct services – a self service system and a tailored recruitment service. Both services are free to employers.

To use the self-service system employers give details of the jobs to FÁS by phoning the FÁS Contact Centre (1800 611116) or directly on-line at www.fas.ie. These details go immediately into the databases of 28 EEA Member States, and also appear on their websites. Interested applicants then apply directly to the company. At any one time there are over 900,000 jobs in the system, of which 11,000 plus are from Ireland.

The second opportunity for employers is to avail of specially designed European recruitment projects. FÁS Eures Advisers will work with individual employers and find out their requirements. The positions are then advertised in another country, applications are sent to the employer who chooses which candidates they wish to interview. The interview arrangements and facilities are provided by the PES in the host country.

The employer then travels to the other country to carry out the interviews. Candidates also attend presentations on living and working conditions in Ireland, and on the contracts of employment.

“We feel this is of great benefit to the applicants who receive full information so they can make an informed decision as to whether they should accept the contracts or come to Ireland and it is obviously good for employers as well, because the last thing the employer wants is jobseekers to come here and have false expectations and after a week or month decide to go back,” said Tony Watson, Eures Co-ordinator with FAS.

Since the accession of Poland to the EU FÁS-Eures has organised many successful recruitment events in Poland. A major construction recruitment event will be held in Warsaw on the 17th and 18th August.

Financial Services Insert

While survey data shows that the majority of Polish workers in the Irish economy work in lower skilled sectors, an increasing amount of Polish highly skilled workers and graduates are taking up opportunities within the higher-value sectors of the Irish economy.

One employment market in which there is a high demand for qualified candidates from abroad is in financial services.

“There continues to be a shortage of people in the Irish market, particularly in the funds area, and we have turned our attention towards Poland to tap into a rich vein of young finance professionals,” said David Wilkes, Director of Irish financial recruitment specialists Cox, Fitzsimons & Wilkes, who have been recruiting in Poland for the past two years.

“We recently completed a very successful recruitment project on behalf of one of our clients, a large US Bank in Dublin. We used multiple sourcing channels which produced in excess of 90 candidates and interviewed almost 50, producing a shortlist of 20. Our client then came to Warsaw, met and offered 19 jobs and we have a 100% acceptance rate. We hope to repeat this process and will endeavour to replicate the results. The time frame of execution was 4 weeks,” said Wilkes.

Wilkes stresses that Poland is not a source of cheap labour and candidates are offered the exact same salaries, terms and conditions, but the Polish market is an additional resource which is useful as the Irish sector is particularly tight at present.

“The education system there produces highly qualified young graduates who speak English and another language, usually German, have with interim experience and a very strong work ethic,” said Wilkes.

Wilkes argues that recruiting from the Polish market requires a little extra work from Irish companies, but is well worth the effort.

“Our Polish venture has been particularly interesting for us and was a huge learning experience, one where we needed to fine-tune our screening to accommodate cross-cultural differences,” he said.